NCAA Women's Championship: Feeling Blu(e)?

So will Duke University win its (approximately) 23rd consecutive women's golf championship? Will Amanda Blumenherst win the individual title - or at least beat Arkansas' Stacy Lewis - and claim her third straight Player of the Year award?

We'll start finding out tomorrow. The NCAA Division I women's championship takes place on the University of New Mexico golf course Tuesday through Friday. Five teams are the favorites, as the rankings agree:

While Duke is considered the favorite, it's a stretch to call them a heavy favorite, or a clear favorite.

No team is hotter than Southern Cal at the moment. USC beat UCLA by 22 strokes at the Ping/ASU tournament in early May, then beat UCLA by 26 at the PAC-10 Championship a couple weeks ago. Sagarin's computer model has both USC and UCLA ahead of Duke. And Florida has been turning heads throughout the second half of the season.

On the individual front, there are clear favorites. Two of them: Blumenherst and Lewis, and their Player of the Year race could well come down to who finishes ahead of the other.

But there are other great candidates for individual glory, too, starting with my favorite golfer, Tiffany Joh. Southern Cal's Belen Mozo and Purdue's Maria Hernandez are others who might thwart the Blu/Lew combo.

Once the tournament starts on Tuesday,  you can follow live scoring at golfstat.com , and there'll be lots of tournament coverage at golfweek.com , too.